Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Quick:Name a movie you have seen in the past five, ten,
or even twenty years that had a realistic portrayal of communism.I bet you can’t.The only one I could even think of was 1999’s
Animal Farm (which I have not seen),
based on the George Orwell novel, and I’m not sure you can count talking
animals as realistic anyway.A few
novels come to mind--Arthur Koestler’s Darkness
at Noon, for
example.But when it comes to cinema,
you are much more likely to see pro-communist films (like 2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries) or films
critical of McCarthyism (or anti-anti-communism) (2015’s Trumbo; 2015's Good Night, and Good Luck) than anything that depicts the ugly reality of Marxism. And if you read this blog you know that anti-Nazi films are as plentiful as the stars in the sky.

Napoleon, Animal Farm

The Lives of Others
stands as a splendid variation to that trend.Set in East Germany about a half decade before the Berlin Wall fell, The Lives of Others focuses on the work
of a Stasi officer, Gerd Wiesler.The
Stasi was essentially East Germany’s version of the KGB, the secret police who
kept the government informed of any non-conformity.And Gerd is as good as it gets at what he
does.The movie opens with him teaching
a class to some Stasi-wannabes on how to do an interrogation, and we can tell this guy takes his job
seriously. Gerd plays a recording to the class of
himself doing an “interview,” and the interviewee begs for some sleep.In the classroom, one wisenheimer asks, “Why
not let him sleep?It’s inhumane.”Gerd answers the question politely, but puts
a little X next to that guy’s name on the class chart.We get the feeling it isn’t to give him bonus
points for class participation.

You just made the list, buddy.

In
pre-Glasnost East Germany, one had better watch what one says, and does, and
especially writes.Playwright Georg
Dreyman has been a pretty good party guy, but somebody has it in for him, so
Gerd is assigned to watch him.A job
like this seems super-Stasi to him, so Gerd is more than willing to see if
Georg is as squeaky-clean a communist as he pretends to be.This is going to require the full-on Big
Brother treatment—microphones all over Georg’s apartment.Georg is ready to spend hours listening to
Georg type his plays, sleep, and get it on with his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria (in fact, one reason Georg is being targeted is to possibly get him out of the way so some big shot can slide in and scoop up Christa-Maria).But Georg, of course, is not 100% on board
with the communists these days and writes an article, published anonymously,
that the government would find offensive.It’s up to Gerd to find proof that Georg wrote it.

To
go further with this review would be to spoil it somewhat, and this is one you
should see.But I will say that the
movie’s climax takes place shortly before Gorbachev becomes leader of the
Soviet Union, so we the viewers know communism’s days in East Germany
are numbered. This adds to the drama--will Georg survive under the communist heel until its reign is over?

Stasi emblem: They seem like fun people!

This
movie is filled with slow-burning suspense that draws us in and then
delivers.The main characters are subtly
drawn, and I especially enjoyed the minimalist acting of Ulrich Mühe (who died
within a year of the release of this film), who plays Gerd.Mühe plays Gerd like a real person—seemingly
robotic in his ideological inflexibility on the surface, but whether his
humanity will allow itself to surface is what is in question.The
Lives of Others gives us a peek into what it must have been like to live
behind the Iron Curtain, but it also tells a great story.

The Culture:2014’s Ida
gave us a peek into Poland toward the beginning of communism after World War
II; this films shows that life wasn’t better toward the end of communism in
East Germany.

Agenda Danger:William F. Buckley, father of
the modern conservative movement, remarked after watching the film, “I think
that is the best movie I ever saw.”So sure, you could say there is an agenda, but not an untruthful one.

Best Picture that year:The Departed

Rating:I don’t know if this was the best movie I
ever saw (that would be The Godfather,
in case you wanted to know), but it is one of the best foreign ones I’ve ever
seen.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The
concept of the “antihero” has always appealed to me.Today, you can’t turn on the TV without
finding a show that has one to root for—think Tony Soprano, Walter White,
Don Draper, Tywin Lannister.And so many great films have
had us hoping for the best for the “bad” guys, like Al Pacino in The Godfather and William Holden in Stalag 17.These
protagonists are immoral, live only for themselves, and will generally
disregard anyone else’s interests.You
know, like millennials.(JK,
Millennials!).

Javert, Les Miserables

But
one thing most good antiheroes have is that one speck of decency that makes
them do the right thing every once in a while, maybe even in a spectacular
way. After all, Michael Corleone loved his kids and Sefton helped to catch the real mole in Stalag 17. In The Counterfeiters, Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch is that
man.As you can probably guess from the
title, Salomon likes to make fake money.He is the best in the business—his phony currency looks, feels, and even
smells like the real thing—no Monopoly guys on his fake bills, that’s for
sure. And Salomon is living large because of
it.But Sally is a Jew, and one ought
not be a Jew in 1930’s Germany.He gets
caught by a zealous Nazi Javert-type who has it in for him and is sent off to
the nearest local concentration camp.

Bill Holden as Sgt. Sefton, Stalag 17: The Classic Anti-hero

Sally
is able to get special treatment because he is a darn good artist—a skill he
had to have as a counterfeiter.Soon he
is selling portraits for better food, and is living just a little better than
the rest of the inmates.Some Nazis
somewhere hear that Sally is really good at making the fake German marks—they
wonder, could he do it with British pounds?They figure if you could flood
Britannia with fake bills, you could wreak all sorts of havoc with the English
economy. Sally is just guy they need to pull it off.

So
Sally and some of his chums start cranking out the fake bills for the
Nazis.Sally is a perfectionist and is
damn proud of his craft, so it doesn’t take long for him to lose his priorities.Before long, he is like Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai, obsessing
over the craft and forgetting who the real enemy is.

Nick Nolte, film version of Mother Night

In
his novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend
to be.”As a counterfeiter extraordinaire,
Sally has to figure out who he is:Is he
a counterfeiter who happens to be Jewish, working for the Nazis to get treated better; or is he a
Jewish guy who happens to be a counterfeiter, pretending he is helping the Nazis but really looking for a way to sabotage his enemy?And will he show that speck of decency that makes anti-heroes so fun to root for?

Like most Holocaust-related films, this movie
is mostly bleak in tone.But the actor
who plays Saloman, Karl Markovics, brings a lightness and a self-assuredness
that makes him easy to root for, kind of like Holden in Stalag 17.As a
counterfeiting anti-hero, he is the real deal.

The Title: Die
Fälscher. Die makes the article "the" plural; this isn't about a threat against some guy named Herr Falscher.

The Culture:A decent, if unimportant culturally, addition
to the Holocaust-related cannon.